I’m not sure if that is quite right, but I do know that the second premise is true. Boardgames really do contain maths. On 1/12/15, we were all invited to bring in a boardgame and to play in the workshop, and I’ll admit that I was skeptical about it, but again, I was proven wrong. We talked about where the maths comes into it, and I was not disappointed!
One such example was a jigsaw. We were tasked with finding as many uses for a jigsaw as we could, I could think of:
Grouping
Distribution
Tessellation
Randomisation
Fractions
This makes a lot of sense as when most of us pick up a jigsaw, we tend to split the pieces up by colour, then we look for corners and straight edges and begin to build up the picture. The particular jigsaw we were using was a ‘Where’s Wally?’ one, so we considered distribution in the number people in the picture and then looked for the average number of people in a piece. Another obvious mathematical concept within comes in the form of tessellation, essentially that all the jigsaw pieces fit together to form a continued pattern, which is of course the case with a jigsaw.
Another game we had was Monopoly, the related mathematical concepts in Monopoly and I struggled to think of any. Yes, there is the obvious money, grouping of similarly priced properties, but I felt that there should be more, and they should be easier to find. When in doubt, take to google! I found this blog called ‘MONOPOLY MATH’ by someone called Lainie Johnson {http://blog.keycurriculum.com/monopoly-math/} which gave me loads of ideas, including:
Shape (rectangles and squares on the board)
Numerical orders (Properties are laid out in ascending value)
Probability (Dice)
Or as Lainie sums it up, “addition, subtraction, multiplication, fractions, percentages, statistics, probability, interest, patterns, number lines, and basic geometry”
This, to me, is amazing, I love to think that there is still more to discover in the world of mathematics, things that are not abstract beyond my understanding. So from a teaching perspective boardgames are an untapped resource for children. In my experience, the only time we see boardgames in classrooms is during free time or on the last few days of term as a means of keeping children quiet. To me, boardgames could be used far more constructively, to improve maths skills in children. I also think that the activity we did in the workshop, where we had the game in front of us an had to find the maths could be a good co-operative learning activity for groups of children, with perhaps a reward near the end of the week to be able to play the game.
“The impact of conflict, violence and displacement on education in Iraq is nothing short of devastating,” said Peter Hawkins, UNICEF’s Representative in Iraq. “Large numbers of children – those in host communities, displaced from their homes, as well as refugee children from Syria – continue to experience significant disruptions to their education, putting Iraq at risk of losing an entire generation to conflict.”
This quotation from Peter Hawkins, who is UNICEF’s Representative in Iraq. Hawkins is taking about the effects of the current conflict in Iraq. It seems that education is being affected by the conflict from all directions, and the children who are trying to access it are the ones who are losing out.
One major issue is that 5,300, which is 20% of schools, are no longer able to be used for education. This is because they are being used to house refugees or other displaced people. They are also being used by the military or are simply not safe for use due to being in a state of disrepair. The effect of this is that some children will no longer have a school which is close enough for them to attend and therefore they may have had to stop going to school because it’s not practical as it is too far, too dangerous, or costly to make the journey to access education.
On top of this, it has been reported that in the past year “67 attacks on schools and education personnel were reported”. This is a huge number of attacks and understandably will have scared those who work in education and those who access it. This would mean that teachers and other staff members are likely not wanting to go in to work and parents similarly do not want to put their children in unnecessary danger by sending them to school.
Another issue is, that in “northern Iraq, nearly 14,000 teachers have been forced to flee violence.” This means that there are far fewer teachers than there should be teaching in Iraq. This can mean that children do not have qualified teachers giving them an education so they will not learn as effectively, and may also not learn the correct material. The other issue is that it could mean that schools have to close and children begin to receive no education at all. I would argue that this is a massive brain drain for the country.
And what is the ultimate effect of all of the above? Well, in my opinion, in just a few years Iraq will find that they have an entire generation of children without an education. This will mean that they will find themselves without facing a shortage of people to become doctors, nurses, dentists, infrastructure workers etc. Iraq is going to have to work especially hard to deal with this problem in the very near future, so I believe that they need to work on education as soon as it is possible to prevent further issues related to health, crime and other social issues.
So far in the module, the demand planning and logistics has been my favourite. I enjoyed the problem-solving nature of the activity and I think I was quite good at it.
Ever since, I have been looking for examples of this kind of activity in my everyday life. It is difficult to write about this one, as I am not allowed to mention the company I work for nor the exact nature of my work, however I am going to try.
Essentially this weekend I had a 2-hour slot to go around 11 different pubs in the local area. This was a lot harder than you may think, I had to plan my route around the city as I had to visit in three different post code areas. I admit that one thing I am really bad at is reading maps. I cannot ever seem to understand which way is North, what way round the map is, or where I am on the map. Usually I would just get someone else to do it, but this time I had to do planning for myself.
I decided to use Google Street-View to locate all of the places I needed to go and in what order. The time I had did not allow for doubling-back on myself, so I needed to get it right the first time. Initially I just put all the addresses in and thought it would do, but I found there was a lot of problems as I would have to drive up and down the same roads and it would not work in the time.
I found Google Street-View was a good tool for this kind of activity. I could put in all the addresses I wanted and then I could begin to switch them around until my route became as simplified as was possible and I could do all of the jobs in as short an amount of time as possible. I believe that this is logistics as I had information in the form of the addresses I had to get to and a problem in the form of how to get to them in a short period of time.
From a teaching perspective, this could be quite a good activity as it would teach children about planning routes themselves, especially if they too can’t read maps, it would also be a good problem solving activity, as it is fundamental mathematics but it does not require any maths skills in the academic sense, which could be a great activity to encourage confidence.
On a personal level, I have also learned that I should probably try to gain some confidence of my own in map-reading. This is something I am going tottery my best to do as during the Outdoor Education workshop, I had to sit back and allow the others in my group to take the lead as I did not understand what was going on at all. I am going to make every effort to be able to do this.
Myself and Jenny found that we were quite good at this activity…
Demand Planning and Logistics
This activity was an interesting one for me. We paired up and had to complete the activity, based around demand planning. To explain what demand planing is, I found this video was really good at explaining it:
Basically it is planning ahead how much stock an organisation is going to sell so that there is enough stock available to sell so as to make as much profit as possible. Obviously that is a really simplified explanation, but that is what it is.
We got into pairs and were given a spreadsheet to fill in. We were given €5,000, and had to run a shop. We had to plan what would sell depending on the season and how much of it we should buy. Each season we were told how much of our products had sold and at what price and we then had to decide what to buy more of and what to stop buying.
The mathematics involved was not difficult, but it did require a lot of thought. Some people lost money by ordering the wrong products, such as Christmas selection boxes in the summer season, or ice-cream wafers in the winter season. We also had the option of buying ‘Premium Durian’, which only ever sold around 10-20%, and was therefore not a good buy as it would cost more to purchase than the profit made on them when sold. Also available were items such as beans, bananas and milk, which always sold at a minimum of 70%.
The maths was not the arithmetic involved, we had calculators and it was mostly very simple addition and subtraction. The real mathematics was in the patterns that began to form. It took some of us a a little while to understand this, but we had to be able to see that, for example, bread sales were always high, so investing in bread was a good idea as it always sold, whereas the durian did not sell or only sold very little. Of course it was important to look at the selling price of certain seasonal items in each season, as when it dropped suggested that it was not going to sell as well.
From a teaching perspective this was interest to consider, as on the face of it, it seems to be fairly complicated. However, the more I considered the activity, the more I thought it was one that I may try with children. I think that it could be done as a mathematics activity, but also a business one. It also occurred to e that this could be a really good activity to have children engage in cooperative learning and good to encourage them to take on group roles. I also think that it could be adapted and used in almost any class topic, maybe running a school or a zoo or maybe a park. I think that it would require a lot of build up and the children in the class would need to be given a lot of support. but it is definitely an activity I would try in the future.
Before watching the above clip, I would have said that I could understand the arguments that schools do stifle creativity, through making them wear uniforms, and learn uncreative subjects like mathematics and providing them with a structured day. But I would also have said that many schools do provide what I would deem adequate facilities for children to express their creativity, through the compulsory inclusion of the expressive arts.
Having listened to the ideas of Sir Ken Robinson, I find the concept of ‘compulsory expressive arts’. This seems ironic now, as we are attempting to structure our children’s creativity. I now agree that we probably do educate children out of their creative capacities, as we move through the education system, less and less emphasis is placed upon the expressive arts subjects, unless one has a specific talent in it, at which point we again attempt to structure their work, while we have the other children learn ‘more useful’ subjects.
I also accept his point that children begin to lose the ability to have a go and make mistakes, I see it all the time at university. I myself do not volunteer to answer questions or otherwise contribute incase I am wrong or look daft in front of other students. I think that children are almost conditioned to think that mistakes are bad as they go through school, and I hate to think that the children I will work with will have this worry.
I remember sayings like “Don’t do music, you won’t be an musician” and “Don’t do art, you won’t be an artist”. And while I did not have a specific interest myself, I have friends who did and I am sure would have done well, but they had parents who did not think that there was a lot of value in it, though on the other hand, I also had friends who received scholarships to school in music and have now left school and gone on to pursue their talent.
I think that there are some children who have to ‘move to think’, though I was not one myself, preferring to sit and listen. I think that there is probably more that schools could do to help these children to learn effectively, though I would have to do some more research to give any examples. I think that an increase in the amount of time spent on the expressive arts may be a good place to start.
Productive Failure, it sounds strange, basically it is a teaching strategy by which children are set up to fail. They are set a mathematics task that they have not learned yet: standard deviation; parabolas; algebra, and they have to try to do the problem by working through it. The method was first coined by Dr Manu Kapur, who is the head of the Learning Sciences Lab at the National Institute of Education of Singapore. His website – see above – is well worth a read of to see more of his work.
I have been thinking a lot about this method of teaching. Essentially children are being asked to complete problems that they do not know how to complete, it is completely beyond their abilities at this point. Initially I wondered how this could possibly be helpful, we all know the dangers of setting work at a level that is too difficult for the child to complete, with their self-esteem and confidence especially in a subject such as mathematics as it is the cause of much anxiety in and of itself.
But then I though more about it and it struck me that there were strong links with Productive Failure and Vygotski’s Zone of Proximal Development.
Essentially, Productive Failure asks children to work within the red section of the Zone of Proximal Development, as they are asked to complete problems that they cannot do. Now that I can see this, I realise that Productive Failure could be a highly useful classroom tool if used in the right way. I think that the method would have to be talked through first, so that children understand fully that it is not to catch them out, it’s not a test, and that it is a chance for them to see what they will be learning and look for possible links to topics they have done before. I also think that it would have to be a collaborative activity where children could work in small groups or pairs to work on a problem to bits of it work out. It would very much be about scaffolding and building up knowledge.
I think that this is a concept that I would like to use, possibly on my 3rd or 4th year placement to see if it works well in practice, and whether it is easily adapted to different ages and stages and even subjects, perhaps for beginning new topics or learning spelling words.
Before I start, I would like to make a few points. First, I am not attempting to write a scathing report on the UK Independence Party, nor am I even planning to demonstrate my opinion on any matter than education. Also, this is not an attempt to convince anyone to vote in a certain way, simply, it is my own reflections on the policies of the party, both positive and negative, and anyone is completely welcome to disagree with anything I say! I know that education is devolved to Scotland, so is unlikely to affect my education or my future career, but I do believe that my reflections are worth making.
I have copied some of the main points from UKIP’s manifesto from their website:
Ease teachers’ workloads by cutting down on assessments, data collection and appraisals
Scrap teachers’ performance-related pay
End sex education for primary school children
Bring back grammar schools and support a range of secondary schools including vocational, technical and specialist schools
Waive tuition fees for science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM) subjects at university
Make First Aid training part of the national curriculum
“Ease teachers’ workloads by cutting down on assessments, data collection and appraisals”
I can see the point that they are trying to make, which is to reduce the bureaucracy and allow teachers to spend their time planning and teaching. However, I believe that assessments, data collection and appraisals can all be of value. For teachers, these things can be used to set targets and improve practice. I think that they key is in how individual schools and individual teachers use these things so that they are not aimless uses of time, but rather it is extremely meaningful. Assessments are not the be all and end all within education, but I can see that they can be beneficial if used correctly, so they should not be cut down. Ultimately, I can understand what this policy was attempting to do, but I cannot agree with it.
“Scrap teachers’ performance-related pay”
I am aware that we do not have performnce-related pay, but I think this point is worth consideration. Basically, it is saying teachers should not be paid based on their performance as teachers. A survey on the opinions of teachers in Wales about performance-related pay, it was found that “it would be problematic to isolate the performance of individual teachers and deleterious to collegiality and teamwork in schools” I agree with these points, I wonder how teacher would be assessed. Would it be based on attainment within their class? The problem with this is that children develop at different rates, so children who take longer to develop would bring a class average down. This could potentially result in a teachers trying to avoid having certain children in their class. I also wonder if teachers who are low on the pay scale would perhaps give up, and not put in as much effort. Of course, the counter-argument is that performance-related pay could be highly motivating to some teachers who would strive to be the best, but that begs the question: would they simply do it for the increased money, or would they do it because they loved it and they enhanced pay be a bonus? While I can understand this argument, I do not agree. I can see that performance-related pay could become a negative tool and therefore this policy is a sensible one.
“End sex education for primary school children”
This one speaks for itself, it means that many children will reach 12 years old with no understanding of sex education. I believe that it is essential that children know about sex and relationships, but also about their bodies. For me, the aim of sex education is to promote healthy habits in the future, not teaching children to do things that they are too young for.
“Bring back grammar schools and support a range of secondary schools including vocational, technical and specialist schools”
This is an interesting concept to consider. They are advocating the use of grammar schools, which are “the only state schools… that are allowed by law to select all their pupils on the grounds of high academic ability”. This means that children can be put on a completely different track based on whether they do well in the admissions test. To me, this is wrong as it limits the opportunities offered to children, and I think it could be detrimental to their confidence if they fail to gain entry. “The specialist schools programme is a UK government initiative that encourages secondary schools in England to specialise in certain areas of the curriculum in order to boost achievement.” I also have a problem with this, it is all very well to join a specialist school but I do not feel that it gives children enough opportunity to change their minds. They may want to be a dancer or performer when they are aged 11 or 12, and then decided they want something entirely different from their lives by the time they’re 16 By then it would be too late to change their minds.
“Waive tuition fees for science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM) subjects at university”
This could seem like a positive move, but to me, I see strong bias in favour of people who are more academic who would be most likely to study a STEMM subject. This would mean any creative subject would require the payment of tuition fees, such as: Art, Music, English Literature or Performing Arts. These people on lower incomes may feel pushed to apply for STEMM subjects just because they would not have to pay for them and go on to struggle with the course content. This means that creative or arts subjects would only be accessible to those who could afford tuition fees, limiting the choices for those from lower income families
“Make First Aid training part of the national curriculum”
I do not see any problems with this policy. The number of people I know my own age who have no first aid skills is very high. St John’s Ambulance’s research says that two-thirds (59%) wouldn’t feel confident trying to save a life. This is a huge number of people with no skills in this area, and that does not account for the number of people with out-of-date skills. If every child had this as a mandatory part of their education it would allow them to build up a highly useful skill set which they will be able to use throughout their lives. Also, I believe that it may be something that children who struggle with academics may find they are good at and could be a means of building up confidence in some children. It goes without saying that any training would have to be age appropriate.
My final point comes as a result of a group activity. We had to get into groups and research a political party and I was in the UKIP group. Something that I became aware of was that some people did not even try to be impartial and talk about their party without also giving their opinion. While this was in a peer setting, as opposed to a teaching one, I have become aware that there will almost definitely come a point in our careers where we have to teach about the political parties. It will be essential at that time to be completely impartial. On 1PP1 last year, I taught a bit about politics around the time of the 2015 General Election. I had to be very careful, even not to agree with anything children said. This is something that I think will be very important to remember throughout our teaching careers.
Ordinarily, I would say that I am quite good in my grasp of English language, but I have an Achilles heel, in that I am rubbish with commas! I don’t know what it is, but for some reason I cannot get them right. I have identified it previously in my OLA as a weakness, but I have never made much of an effort to tackle the problem, until now that is!
I took to the internet and found a video on Youtube:
The video goes through the 3 main types of comma: listing commas, joining commas and bracketing commas. It explained what each is and how and when to use them.
Around 4 1/2 minutes in, you are asked to look at 4 sentences and pick the ones with incorrect use of commas. I originally thought there was a trick, as all looked correct to me. I think my problem is with the joining comma. I find that I use commas too often, and in place of other punctuation, such as full stops and semi-colons which would be more grammatically correct.
I also looked up a video about the Oxford comma. Which is a comma which comes after the word ‘and’.
The Oxford comma was something I had heard of, but not ever learned to use. The video explains that it is neither correct or incorrect and can avoid ambiguity. The problem is that a text will be consistent, either using it or not using it. I wonder if I have been using it when the OLA will not recognise it and mark it as wrong.
I looked through one of my essays to find an example of my own use of commas:
‘On placement I observed a classroom which utilised space effectively in this way, all small resources – pens, crayons and show-me boards – were kept in labelled trays at the front, meaning pupils knew exactly where to find them and where to return them, so the gathering of resources was kept to a minimum and did not affect learning and teaching time.’
This is all one sentence, and it is clear that it could be broken down and does not need anywhere near as many commas as I have used. This is a good example of what I do regularly and therefore what I need to teach myself out of. I am going to resit the OLA and try to improve the points I get specifically around the comma questions. I’ll update when I have done so…
Before I start, I feel I should point out that this post is about me, not the tutor leading the workshop or the other students that are part of it.
I went up to the room feeling normal, walked into the room and the tutor greeted us by saying “bonjour!” and I could feel myself begin to panic. I am not ‘bad’ at French, I got an A at Int 2, and I still remember quite a lot of what I was taught. The second that the tutor started speaking French, however, I was transported back to sitting in French class in high school feeling awkward, uncomfortable, and wanting to hide under a desk the whole time. It may sound dramatic but that’s how I’ve always felt about French. I hated speaking it in front of anyone or doing anything in a french class to draw attention to myself!
This workshop was particularly stressful. The tutor had us doing actions to go with some of the vocab, I avoided joining in as long as possible, then when I had to I put in as little energy as possible. When she was asking unto say things out loud I found myself pretending not to know things, or pretending to write just to avoid making eye contact and being asked to participate by speaking out loud.
Looking at the workshop objectively, I thought what we were learning was very good, I thought that all the games and speaking out loud would be fun to most people. I think it is probably a very effective way to learn a language. I wonder if my reaction to French could be similar to ‘Maths Anxiety’ (explored in another post), do I have some kind of a phobia of French? If so, then it will need to be sorted. As a teacher I cannot pass my own feelings about the subject on to the children that I work with. If I do not come across confident in teaching a language, then the children will not be confident in my ability to teach them, which would significantly impact on their education.
I decided to look up my feelings and came back with ‘Foreign Language Anxiety’. It is described as “a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviours related to classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the (foreign) language learning process” which makes a lot of sense to me. I also found the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLACAS). It is a questionnaire which asks participants to read statements and rate how much they agree. Questions include “I start to panic when I have to speak without preparation in language class.” and “It embarrasses me to volunteer answers in my language class.” Looking at the questions, almost all of them apply to me!
So what should I do now? Realistically I think that languages are always going to be the cause of some anxiety for me. Now that I am aware of it, I have to deal with it. I think that I should start participating more often in class, there are only 20 people, and realistically they are not there to pounce on me if I speak and make mistakes! For all I know, many of them may be feeling the same way that I do. I think knowing this will make it easier for me to teach languages to children who feel nervous or anxious too. I will be able to differentiate better as I will be able to recognise children who feel this way and perhaps allow them to do slightly different tasks, for example working with a partner as opposed to a large group.
I feel that this small amount of research and reflection has been very useful to me. I now know that I am not alone in panicking over learning a language and I am confident that I can overcome the worst of such feelings to be an effective teacher in the future.
Out of 5, I would give my anxiety levels a 1.
Al-Saraj, Taghreed M. (No Date) FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANXIETY: WHAT IS THIS? Available at: https://www.soas.ac.uk/lmei/events/ssemme/file67903.pdf (Accessed: 16 October 2015)
Horwitz, Elaine K., Horwitz, Michael B., and Cope, J (1986) Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale. Available at: http://www.studyabroad.purdue.edu/Resource/InterculturalLearning/ForeignLanguageAnxietyScale.pdf (Accessed: 16 October 2015)
Children should know that their thoughts and feelings are valued by adults, and that they can think and speak for themselves without worrying about being wrong or of anyone making fun of them. Education should be for developing self confidence and self worth in order that children feel comfortable with themselves whilst in the school environment.
The aim of school should be to produce well rounded individuals who have a creative and critical way of thinking. I believe that high quality teaching is the most effective way to achieve this. From the 1PP1 placement, I found that as long as children are interested in the lesson, then they are learning, so we should all be making sure that what we teach is interesting to the children we work with.
Education should always be inclusive of all learners. If somebody is making an effort to turn up to school, then they deserve to be included fully in the education system. Saying this, if children are not, or do not want to make the effort to come to school, then we should look to the education system and see what may have disillusioned the learner and look to make changes as opposed to blaming the learner. I believe that school should promote a disciplined approach to education. I do not think it is a massively important point to make, of course teachers should be aware of behaviour management techniques, but they should not be a main focus.
Schooling should offer as many subjects and experiences as possible. The aim of education, in my opinion, is to produce well rounded individuals. I think that the best way to do this is to give them knowledge and experiences. They should study the basics in order to understand the more exciting specific subjects, ie. should be able to read so that they are not focusing on the reading but engage with what they are actually reading. In my opinion, the Curriculum for Excellence does this really well, the idea of one topic spanning several curriculum areas is a really positive one. I think that all children can benefit from such a system.
Teachers were some of the best role models for me throughout school, I always admired them for the way they seemed to know everything. Despite this, I remember one occasion while I was in high school when somebody asked the biology teacher a question and he answered it, but the next lesson he told us that he had given us an incorrect answer and that he had asked another teacher and found out the correct answer. I remember this as, I can imagine, being a teacher it must be difficult to admit to not knowing an answer, and certainly to come back having made an effort to find out the correct answer was admirable to me. This particular teacher, to me, was an example of a teacher who is willing to go the extra mile and therefore was a role model to me.
School should offer the opportunity to achieve academically, but for me there should be more to it than just passing through a system and come out the other end with a certificate of exam results. Of course children should learn some academic skills, they should have developed language and mathematics skills, and plenty experience of RME, Social Subjects, Technologies, Expressive Arts, Health and Wellbeing and Science. They should be able to experience so much more from their time in school: experience success, critical thinking skills, creativity and social skills. They should be directed, but be given enough space to develop in their own way and at their own pace.
